As Elizabeth Barrett Browning says “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”, but at the same time, Mimosa Networks sometimes vexes me sorely!

I’m assuming if you are looking into this write up, you are somewhat familiar with Point to Point and Point to Multi Point wireless networking, but if you aren’t, Click the terms mentioned for a primer.

Mimosa Networks is an award winning Ethernet network wireless back haul and access hardware manufacturer based out of Santa Clara, CA, USA. They were founded in 2012 and are privately held. In their own words, here are the features that they feel set them apart: Massive MIMO, Beamforming, Multi-User MIMO, Synchronized Spectrum Reuse, & Complete Cloud Control.

Mimosa B5 Point to Point Radio with Integrated Dish

I’ve been using the B5 and B5C Point to Point radio’s from Mimosa for over a year now, and they have been performing quite well with one exception, which appears to have been finally addressed in the latest firmware version (1.4.1). As you can probably tell from the firmware versions, these products are still relatively new to the scene, and some growing pains are to be expected. With 1.2.1 to 1.3.1 firmware, I had an issue where one of the radio pairs would go into a one way communication on its ethernet port. Only a power cycle would address the issue. Knock on wood, we’re a good month and a half after installing 1.4.1 and I’ve not seen this issue show up again.

With the above issue seeming addressed, let’s talk performance in my use cases. As a rural oil and gas producer/operator, there isn’t “a lot” of other 5G traffic in the area besides other operators and/or ISP’s in the area.

Considering i’m not a traditional ISP needing maximum bandwidth at all time, I tend to run 2 x 20Mhz channels H/V Polarized.

As you can see, on an almost 31 mile shot, we’re experiencing real world 69 Mbps full duplex, and configuration was a breeze.

I once turned up one of our most rural links, a 22 mile shot, to 2 x 80 Mhz channels… I was getting 1.3 Gbps MAC speeds!!! I turned it back down to be a good steward of the public frequency space..

]]>26924Google Takeout – Backup Your Datahttp://waynehancock.net/2016/07/11/google-takeout-backup-data/
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 14:37:32 +0000http://waynehancock.net/?p=73Google Takeout is here to save the day, really! Backup Your Google Data! Are you worried that Google has forsaken it’s old mantra of “Don’t be Evil”? Do you feel they are too well connected and host too many of your services? I don’t, because as far as I’m concerned on the internet, privacy is an […]

Are you worried that Google has forsaken it’s old mantra of “Don’t be Evil”? Do you feel they are too well connected and host too many of your services?

I don’t, because as far as I’m concerned on the internet, privacy is an illusion. As long as I operate on the premise that anything and everything I store on the cloud could/may be compromised, I ensure I don’t put things that I don’t possibly want circulated world wide.

But, if you find yourself wanting to part ways with your benevolent overload Google, here is a quick and easy way to grab a copy of everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, you may have ever done with Google.

That is quite an eye opening amount of data specific to me that is stored on Google’s servers eh?

All silliness aside, while I don’t see Google going away anytime soon, they too could be hacked and all this data lost.

For myself, I’m setting a reminder in my calendar app to backup my Google data at least 2 times a year.

You get the option to have an email sent to you that includes the link to download the file, or have it sent to your Google Drive or OneDrive for removal to a safer spot once it’s done zipping it all up.

]]>73In the beginning… My Oil/Gas Field beginningshttp://waynehancock.net/2016/07/06/in-the-beginning/
http://waynehancock.net/2016/07/06/in-the-beginning/#respondThu, 07 Jul 2016 02:56:38 +0000http://waynehancock.net/?p=31I started work at my current employer August 15, 2008. I’ve decided to leave the name of my employer out just because, i’m sure you could find it out in a heartbeat if you wanted. I was hired as a “Senior Systems Engineer”, the 2nd person in a 2 person network group. I feel like […]

]]>I started work at my current employer August 15, 2008. I’ve decided to leave the name of my employer out just because, i’m sure you could find it out in a heartbeat if you wanted.

I was hired as a “Senior Systems Engineer”, the 2nd person in a 2 person network group. I feel like I integrated fairly quickly as the existing network person worked with me at my previous job.

Because I had interest, and wireless experience, I started working with the growing field communications group that was being grown inside the IT group. It wasn’t long until I had jumped in with both feet and the majority of my time was focused on field communications and wireless coverage for our drilling/service areas. A “Field Infrastructure” group was created inside IT, and was later moved out of IT and combined with the SCADA group and moved to Production.

The initial field we first deployed Ethernet wireless to was in South West Texas, we contracted with RSI Communications to build towers for us and then linked those towers with Motorola (now Cambium) PTP-600 Radio’s. These were top of the line radio’s let me tell ya for 2009! GPS Time Synced, 1 ms Latency per wireless hop, real world 100M bi-directional speeds.

We paired these radio’s with a combination of 2 and 3 foot RadioWave’s dual polarity dishes.

The client radio’s for the Canopy system (Called “Subscriber Modules”) were primary deployed at compressor stations where we wanted higher polling rates and data volumes so we didn’t overload the serial system.

These bad boys gave us 7M to split between each client on an AP radio.

At the base of each tower, we had a Cisco 3230 Rugged Integrated Services Router. These bad boys had 1 routed 10/100 interface and two 10/100 switched interfaces. They also ran on DC which was great for our applications and were fan-less. Their original design purpose was to be put into vehicles, but Cisco didn’t have any other rugged offerings at the time. They were NOT however cheap or, fast.

We deployed a 8 tower ring with our field office as one of the tower sites. It was quite a nice solution and I feel quite ahead of its time. Each tower was EIGRP routed with its sites layer 2 connected to the tower router via the PM100 Canopy AP.

No sooner than we finalize the last link to complete the ring and a new field with new needs arose, but that is for another post.

]]>I came across a link recently that lead me to the RF Elements website, where I found an interesting product! RF Elements Symmetrical Horn Antennas.

“Carrier Class Symmetrical Horn Antennas are scalar horn antennas with a symmetrical beam radiation pattern without side lobes. Carrier Class Symmetrical Horns are perfectly suitable for use as Sector Antennas. They offer a unique blend of features that solves major weak points of current mainstream sector antenna technology.”

These are 5G Horns, with a listed Frequency Range of 5180 – 6100 MHz. Gain is listed at 10 dBi for the 90° model, and 18.5 dBi for the 30° to give you a feel for the range between models.

The big deal about these “Horn” Antennas is the lack of side lobes, which could dramatically improve co-location noise levels as well as noise levels for your wireless clients.

Their size relative to traditional sector antennas would mean a big savings in space on towers as well as much improved wind loading.

Quite a nice radiation pattern!

The graphic below highlights some of the possible deployment scenario’s. Rarely do we get a totally even distribution of client sites, so the ability to balance out your wireless clients across your Sectors could go a long way to improving overall speeds and latency.

I’ve not yet got my hands on any of these to test, but thought I’d pass the info along in case it is of use.